


Goodbye, Omi

by Croik



Category: Ghost of Tsushima (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27841279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croik/pseuds/Croik
Summary: Post-game, Masako tells Lord Shimua what he needs to hear.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Goodbye, Omi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ktbl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktbl/gifts).



Lord Shimura remained on his knees for long after Jin had left, until all light extinguished in the west, and the falling maple leaves appeared black with night. 

His wounds had stopped bleeding by then. The blood loss had left him weary, cold, but he would live. Some deep and shameful part of him was disappointed with that fact. To slowly expire along among the leaves, bowed to the dead, was no fitting end for a samurai, let alone the lord and protector of all of Tsushima. They would say his cowardly and traitorous would-be-heir had snuck up behind him in a moment of pious grief and disgraced him with an ignoble death. One last failure for a fallen clan.

And yet, for the moment he could imagine no more enviable fate. So he stayed very still for a while longer, watching each star whisper forth from the inky black sky above.

When Shimura lowered his gaze, he was greeted with his own hunched shadow wreathed in faint orange light. It shrank, humbled, as the lantern behind him drew slowly closer. With a deep breath to find his courage, he looked back: Lady Adachi Masako was approaching, clad in her clan’s armor. 

“Lord Shimura,” she said, and she bowed at the waist. “I hope you’ll forgive me for interrupting you.”

Shimura could not help but smirk, despite himself; though she always spoke with propriety, there was no hint of apology in her steely tone. “It’s no interruption,” he replied, once he was certain he could do so in a steady tone. “I was only admiring the sunset.”

“So was I. I watched from the hilltop.”

Shimura’s heart grew cold. “Did you,” he said, noting that her left hand rested against the scabbard of her _tachi_ in a manner that was only meant to _appear_ casual. “I hope it was a better view from there than it was from here.”

“No, I doubt that it was,” said Masako, her lantern casting warm light across her hard features in a particularly ominous way. She waited a beat longer, as if he might have more to say or ask of her, but he could not bring himself to. Seeing this, she lowered her hand from her sword.

“Would you like to accompany me up to the manor?” she asked. “It’s too cold out here for old bones like ours.”

Shimura agreed. Despite an evening of many disgraces, he did his best not to betray the extent of his pain and exhaustion as he climbed to his feet and then followed Masako up the stone staircase.

The Sakai estate stood empty. Its halls which had already suffered many deaths seemed to lean even heavier in the face of abandonment. A Sakai would never cross its threshold again. Masako led them through a side entrance into a small servant’s room, as if it would have invited misfortune to enter through the main gate. There were supplies already set out: a bowl of water, clean linen for dressing wounds, rosehip and brewed ginseng. Masako shed only her bracers and weapons so that her hands would have easier work, and Shimura set aside the tattered remains of his pride as she assisted in undressing him and treating his wounds.

“Did Jin tell you we would be here?” he asked, trying to distract himself from the hard efficiency of her treatment. 

“He didn’t have to.” Masako drew the bandages around his midsection tight; he clenched his teeth against a sound of pain. “I knew what your duty would be, and that Jin of all people wouldn’t run from you.”

“Jin, of all people,” Shimura repeated. It felt as if a great many years had passed since he could last claim to know his nephew well. He found his gaze drawn again to Masako’s sheathed sword. “Did you come here to kill me? Or him?”

Masako’s brows drew in with the first real evidence of any expression she had made that evening. “I wanted to be prepared for any outcome,” she replied, with a sincerity and conviction that Shimura hoped he would one day be able to feel again. “I thought that one of you might require a beheader, or that General Oga would send some of his men to observe the outcome.” She paused as she poured him a small cup of the herbal tea. “I did consider that if you had killed Jin, I would kill you. That’s probably what you would have wanted of me.” She handed him the cup. “But I don’t think I would have.”

Shimura accepted the tea and drank, using the pause as an excuse to ponder his answer. He had certainly come to this place expecting to die. Hoping for it, maybe. To sever both lines of Shimura and Sakai in one tragic evening might be what both houses deserved, their legacies swiftly forgotten. Ought he have sought that now? Was he a coward if he didn’t wash his neck for Masako’s blade? 

“I don’t know what I would have wanted,” Shimura admitted quietly. “I don’t know what I want now.”

“That’s all right. You have time to decide.”

Shimura frowned, watching as she wound the remaining linen back into a neat ball. “Lord Adachi was a strong man,” he murmured, and she stopped. “I find myself wondering what he would have done differently, in my place.”

Masako placed the ball aside and poured more tea. “It’s pointless to speculate now.”

“You both raised a pair of very fine sons,” he continued anyway. “Their deaths were a crime committed against all of Tsushima.” He pressed in his injured side with his fingertips, feeling out the hot sting of the freshly cleaned wound. “What would you have done, if they had instead fought at Jin’s side against the Khan, in exactly the manner that he did?”

Masako took her time in answering. She sipped from the tea, and he wondered for a moment if she were stalling for time, just as he had done. When she lowered the cup once more, he knew immediately that this was not the case. Her answer was already etched deeply into her features. “My husband and I instilled in our children the same lessons you taught your nephew,” she said evenly. “When they rode away that morning for Komoda Beach, I prepared myself for their deaths. If you would have asked me then, I would have said better they be buried on that beach than return home in disgrace.”

She faced him, holding his gaze in unfaltering eyes. “But now my sons are dead. Their wives are dead—their children are dead. Clan Adachi will not be remembered.” Her expression hardened. “If it meant having them back with me, I would have poisoned the Mongols myself.”

Shimura looked away. He shivered, cold with shame, as Masako finished her tea and then tucked her swords back in her belt. “Clan Shimura will survive,” she continued as she tugged her bracers back on. “Even if the shogun decides to replace you as _jito_ , you can find a young wife. You can rebuild a legacy. Not all of us have that luxury, so I expect you to take advantage of it.”

Shimura rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I can make arrangements for you, while I still have the authority to do so,” he offered. “If you have no plans to join the monastery—”

“Thank you, but I’ve made my own arrangements.”

Masako opened the sliding panel into the house proper, and there sitting in the far end of the chamber was a woman next to a candle, stitching some article of clothing. She looked up as Masako entered, with a warmth and fondness that made Shimura miss his late wife terribly. “Are you ready?” the woman asked.

“Just about,” replied Masako. “Will you please prepare the horse, Mai?”

The woman nodded and stood. “It’s cold, even for the season,” she said, and Masako kept still as she wrapped the fabric she had been stitching around her neck in a scarf.

“Thank you,” said Masako, with greater tenderness than Shimura was used to hearing from her. “I’ll meet you outside.” The woman smiled and left.

Shimura could not help but stare openly, and yet Masako did not seem perturbed at all by his attention. “Will you need an escort to return to Castle Shimura?” she asked.

Shimura shook his head. “No. I think I’ll spend the night here, and then…” He sighed. “I’ll find my own way home.”

“I know you will.” Masako bowed in farewell, which Shimura returned as best he could, and then she slipped out. 

Shimura waited until he could hear the sound of hoofbeats leading away from the house. Operating on exhausted instinct he helped himself to bedding, and he slept in the servant’s quarters tucked beneath his robes like a child. His dreams were laced with fire and blood.

But come morning, as he stepped outside the manner in his bare feet, stiff and sore, the light over the hilltops gently seared away the weight on his shoulders like evaporating dew. Lake Omi shook off its thin layer of fog to shimmer like diamonds on sapphires, its proud tree at the center stretching its branches to the east. The wind blew soft and fragrant, and in the village below the first residents began their daily routines.

Lord Shimura took in the swaying grass, the flittering birds, the sleepy huts. He breathed in slowly and held it a moment before exhaling. It was very difficult to feel melancholy in the face of such fresh tranquility. So much of his lovely island home remained that morning just the same as it had the day before, oblivious to the turmoil of its stewards. Perhaps that was as it should be.

His horse, patient creature, was helping itself to a breakfast of soft grass just beyond the estate. Shimura dressed in his armor, mounted his horse, and rode out of Omi village before any of the folk there could notice or question. He did not have answers for them, not yet. He hoped that he would soon.


End file.
